Princess & The Hustler: Overview (AQA GCSE English Literature): Revision Note

Princess & The Hustler: Overview

The Princess & The Hustler question is part of Paper 2, Section A of your GCSE examination. You are expected to write one essay-length answer to one set question and, unlike with the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions, you will not be given an extract from the text. This can seem daunting at first, but this page contains some helpful information, and links to more detailed revision note pages, that will enable you to feel confident answering any question on Princess & The Hustler. This page includes:

• Who is Chinonyerem Odimba?

• A summary of Princess & The Hustler

• A brief overview of what is required in the exam

• Princess & The Hustler characters

• Princess & The Hustler context

• Princess & The Hustler themes

• Princess & The Hustler quotes

• Top tips for the highest grade

Who is Chinonyerem Odimba?

Chinonyerem Odimba is a Nigerian-born British playwright, poet and screenwriter, and a director of new writing for the stage. She writes about Black British history, and about the inner lives of Black women and girls.

Princess & The Hustler was first performed in 2019, and it grew directly out of research: Odimba spoke at length with Paul Stephenson, one of the organisers of the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963, and the play sets a family drama against that campaign. Odimba has described it as a play “about how racism robs us all of our love and our dreams”.

Odimba could have written a straightforward history of the protest. Instead she keeps the boycott at the edges and puts a ten-year-old girl who wants to win a beauty contest at the centre. This is the play’s key method: it measures a political struggle by what it costs one child’s sense of her own worth. It also keeps the tone hopeful rather than bleak. For more on how Odimba builds the play, see the Princess & The Hustler: Writer’s Methods and Techniques page.

Princess & The Hustler summary

Princess & The Hustler is a play by Chinonyerem Odimba, first performed in 2019 and set in Bristol in 1963. It follows a Jamaican-British family living through the Bristol Bus Boycott, the campaign against a company that refused to employ Black and Asian workers.

Phyllis “Princess” James is ten years old, sharp and determined, and she dreams of winning the Weston-super-Mare beauty pageant — not only for the crown, but to prove her worth against a prejudice that has already decided what she can be. She rehearses her victory speech in a cupboard she has turned into her own world.

Her mother Mavis is holding the household together on very little when Wendell, Princess’s father, returns after years away, bringing his daughter Lorna with him. His return unsettles everyone. Wendell “Junior” resents him for the years of absence, and Mavis is torn between anger and hope.

The outside world keeps breaking in. Junior is attacked by a group of white youths on his way back from a protest march. Lorna tells Princess she will not be attacked herself because she is “only half”. Junior gives Wendell money and asks him to leave. Princess destroys her cupboard world and runs away, cutting off her own hair.

She is found by Margot and brought home. The money Junior accused Wendell of stealing turns out to have been taken by Princess, to pay for the family’s trip to the pageant. Wendell, cleared, reveals that he has been working for the boycott. A radio announcement confirms that the colour bar has been lifted, and the play closes on Princess crowned at last, surrounded by “Black women of all sizes and nations”.

For a more detailed summary, please see the Princess & The Hustler: Plot Summary page.

How is Princess & The Hustler assessed in the exam?

• Paper 2 requires you to answer four questions (three on poetry) in 2hrs 15min. That means you have approximately 45 minutes to plan, write and check your Princess & The Hustler essay

• Paper 2 is worth 96 marks and accounts for 60% of your overall GCSE grade

• The Princess & The Hustler essay is worth 34 marks in total, because it also includes 4 marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar

• Section A of Paper 2 contains the Princess & The Hustler question and you are required to answer only one of the two printed questions on the play

• Unlike the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions, you will not receive an extract of the play in your exam

• It is also a closed-book exam, which means you will not have access to a copy of the text in your exam either

• You will be asked a question that asks you to analyse and write in detail about an aspect of Princess & The Hustler

For a much more detailed guide on answering the Princess & The Hustler question, please see our revision notes on How to Answer the Modern Prose and Drama Essay Question.

Princess & The Hustler characters

The characters you should focus on when revising Princess & The Hustler are:

• Princess (Phyllis)

• Wendell

• Mavis

• Wendell “Junior”

• Margot

• Lorna

• Leon

It is always vital to remember — when considering Princess & The Hustler, or any text — that characters are deliberate constructions created by a playwright for a purpose. These characters often represent ideas, or belief systems, and a writer like Odimba uses them to explore those ideas. For more details, please see the Princess & The Hustler: Characters revision notes page.

Princess & The Hustler context

Understanding how to include context in a GCSE essay is challenging, so it is first necessary to figure out what examiners really mean when they talk about context. They define context not as historical information, or biographical facts about a writer, but as the ideas and perspectives explored by a writer through their text. Therefore, the Princess & The Hustler context you should explore in your essay response is not a history of the Bristol Bus Boycott, or facts about Chinonyerem Odimba’s own life, but ideas about:

• The Windrush generation and belonging

• Racism in 1960s Britain

• Activism and protest

Lots of these ideas and perspectives are still relevant today, so your own opinions on them are valid, and examiners welcome them in an essay. For a detailed breakdown of the contextual topics listed above, see the Princess & The Hustler: Context page.

Princess & The Hustler themes

Understanding the themes that are prevalent in Princess & The Hustler will enable you to reach the highest levels of the GCSE mark scheme. This is because to be rewarded top marks on your essay, you need to take what examiners call a “conceptualised approach”: a detailed and perceptive exploration of Odimba’s ideas and intentions. The main themes explored by Odimba in Princess & The Hustler are:

• Belonging and identity

• Family

• Hope and ambition

• Activism and protest

You are encouraged to explore other themes that Odimba examines in her play, because bringing original ideas when interpreting a text is always rewarded highly at GCSE. However, the above list makes a great place to start, and detailed breakdowns of each of these themes can be found on our Princess & The Hustler: Themes page.

Princess & The Hustler quotes

It is of course important to learn quotations for your Princess & The Hustler exam question, especially since it is a closed-book exam and you will not have a printed extract on your paper. However, it is worth stating here that examiners value “references” to the play just as highly as direct quotations: this is when students pinpoint individual moments in the play, rather than quoting what the characters say. In order to select references really successfully, it is extremely important that you know Princess & The Hustler itself very well, including the order of the events that take place. This detailed scene-by-scene breakdown of the plot will help you to revise the chronology of Princess & The Hustler.

Of course, it is also useful to revise a few — very well selected — quotations from the play that can be used in a variety of essays on different themes and characters. Luckily, we have made that selection for you! For a detailed analysis of each of these quotations, see our Princess & The Hustler: Key Quotations page, and for quotations grouped by character see the Princess & The Hustler: Character Quotations page.

Top tips for the highest grade

Please see our revision pages on the Modern Prose and Drama exam for guides on:

• Structuring the Princess & The Hustler essay

• Princess & The Hustler methods and techniques

• How to include context in a Modern Drama essay

• Understanding the Princess & The Hustler mark scheme

• A Modern Prose and Drama model answer

Sources

Odimba, Chinonyerem. (2019) Princess & The Hustler. Nick Hern Books